I don't think privacy is something to be celebrated in terms of currency, that's why you see so many scammers and hacks in Bitcoin. Exchanges keep running away with their money, etc. Privacy is a delicate issue and 100% is something utopic, you may feel that you don't like being filmed in public spaces but you just have to put up with it, no other way around it. With money it's different, business must be regulated and we as civilians living under government still need to play under certain rules. I'm all for financial sensible information not leaking out if you don't want to, but if every transaction can't be traced then you are giving criminals a great tool. Decentralized and P2P currency is great, completely anonymous not so sure...
Please post .png images of your last three months of bank statements.
Don't worry, I'll wait.
No. Do you have access to that? What's your point? Privacy is not black and white, we live in a society. So there are many privacy issues that are not addressed but we tolerate them. Like airports, taxes, id, contracts, etc, to a certain extent of course. How much money you have in your bank and in your bank account is private but it could be investigated if needed and that for me is perfectly fine. Actually having a public blockchain like Bitcoin used for government expenses where you can see how much tax payers money they have on each account is a great idea for example so privacy is a tool that can be used to our benefit. I don't see any benefit with total and complete financial privacy where you don't know where money comes and goes.
What you miss imo is that you reason in terms of the fiat system and apply it to crypto.
With the fiat system, we have somewhat this middle-spot of private for your neighbours, but transparent for law enforcement in case required. Not everybody is cool with that, but most people I'd say are ok with it (mostly because we've been living with that forever in our lives - except for physical cash).
The flaw then is to apply it to cryptocurrencies and claim it's ok to stop at this middle-spot. However the difference is that there is no privacy with respect to your neighbours, there is no distinction about who is law enforcement or not: anybody on the planet is the law enforcement and can trace your activity.
I hope you'll see the difference here, having mobs pointing fingers on the internet is the last thing you want and certainly has nothing to do with the selective transparency you're used to with fiat money on bank accounts in today's society.
Above point is important, but not as big as: fungibility. Direct consequence of privacy features. Fiat money's fungibility is ensured
by law since centuries since
this famous case. In crypto there is no law other than what you can technically do or not. If people can know the history of some outputs, with complete certainty or just reasonable suspicions, then fungibility is broken. In legacy system, you are not liable for accepting a bank note that was involved in a bank robbed few "hops" before you, this is ensured by law. Because you have no way to know. With traceable crypto, if it's possible for you to know that easily, human law will make you liable for accepting it.
I have been arguing with people on privacy and especially fungibility matters since several years. I was very early on facing that issue as I founded a gambling site (luckyb.it), and not everyone is ok with accepting coins linkable to that sort of activity. And I've seen the same arguments repeated over and over: "Bitcoin is not completely private, but it happens to be just the
sweet spot we need! It is by far private enough for most activities!"
I find that very delusional, you really need to take a step back and look at it with fresh eyes.
Practical example of the constant delusion is the changing message. First it was a firm "Bitcoin is all good and private enough as it is!", and anybody claiming otherwise was deemed a troll or probably shilling for a shitty altcoin. Then it was a convinced "Bitcoin with some mixers is all ok! And guys, coinjoin! Coin-join!", and
historical evidence of such delusional bias quickly dismissed. Lately, the trend is to rely on "confidential transaction". (Funny to witness people screaming that all around, the sames who previously were convinced a mixer was all good - makes you wonder how many do understand what they're talking about).
Actually having a public blockchain like Bitcoin used for government expenses where you can see how much tax payers money they have on each account is a great idea for example so privacy is a tool that can be used to our benefit.
All I wrote above is about people explicitly *not* wanting their stuff to be public, in which case Bitcoin simply does a terrible job.
But I completely agree with you on the benefice of transparency in some cases, in particular for storing and using money donnated, whether to a NGO or a governement.
That is why in Monero you have
view keys, that do precisely that. It's up to an address owner to give the view key to anyone he wants.
The difference?
Monero does privacy by default (cryptographically), transparency on demand.
Bitcoin does transparency by default, privacy (through apparatus on top of it) on demand.
EDIT: typos